Spartak Moscow: A History of the People's Team in the Workers' State

by Robert Edelman

In the informative, entertaining, and generously illustrated Spartak Moscow, a book that will be cheered by soccer fans worldwide, Robert Edelman finds in the stands and on the pitch keys to understanding everyday life under Stalin, Khrushchev, and their successors. Millions attended matches and obsessed about their favorite club, and their rowdiness on game day stood out as a moment of relative freedom in a society that championed conformity. This was particularly the case for the supporters of Spartak, which emerged from the rough proletarian Presnia district of Moscow and spent much of its history in fierce rivalry with Dinamo, the team of the secret police. To cheer for Spartak, Edelman shows, was a small and safe way of saying "no" to the fears and absurdities of high Stalinism; to understand Spartak is to understand how soccer explains Soviet life.

Champions of the Soviet Elite League twelve times and eleven-time winner of the USSR Cup, Spartak was founded and led for seven decades by the four Starostin brothers, the most visible of whom were Nikolai and Andrei. Brilliant players turned skilled entrepreneurs, they were flexible enough to constantly change their business model to accommodate the dramatic shifts in Soviet policy. Whether because of their own financial wheeling and dealing or Spartak's too frequent success against state-sponsored teams, they were arrested in 1942 and spent twelve years in the gulag. Instead of facing hard labor and likely death, they were spared the harshness of their places of exile when they were asked by local camp commandants to coach the prisoners' football teams. Returning from the camps after Stalin's death, they took back the reins of a club whose mystique as the "people's team" was only enhanced by its status as a victim of Stalinist tyranny.

Edelman covers the team from its days on the wild fields of prerevolutionary Russia through the post-Soviet period. Given its history, it was hardly surprising that Spartak adjusted quickly to the new, capitalist world of postsocialist Russia, going on to win the championship of the Russian Premier League nine times, the Russian Cup three times, and the CIS Commonwealth of Independent States Cup six times. In addition to providing a fresh and authoritative history of Soviet society as seen through its obsession with the world's most popular sport, Edelman, a well-known sports commentator, also provides biographies of Spartak's leading players over the course of a century and riveting play-by-play accounts of Spartak's most important matches-including such highlights as the day in 1989 when Spartak last won the Soviet Elite League on a Valery Shmarov free kick at the ninety-second minute. Throughout, he palpably evokes what it was like to cheer for the "Red and White."

Genres: Football, History, Sports, Nonfiction, Soccer, Russia

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spartak Moscow is one of the most famous Football team in Russia. This book chronicled the rise of Spartak Moscow FC from the earliest beginning as one of provincial clubs formed during the heyday of Soviet Union, the struggles of the team, and especially, its founder, Nikolai Starostin, in navigating the survival of the organization during the dreary time of Stalin's rule, and the future during Soviet's last days and early days within Russian Federation.

Among its contemporaries, Spartak occupied a special position, first due to its ambiguities, when other teams, such as Dinamo Moscow is a Police team, and CSKA is a military team, Spartak was a sporting society backed by aglomerations of small cooperatives and small scale business, making it a somewhat civilian-based team. This status was, exploited most skillfully by Starostin and the Spartak team, in establishing the myth of Spartak as the People's team, the team of democracy (although still in peculiar, Soviet Communists frame of mind). Its supporters, in turn, tapped into this sentiment, building the us versus them mentality when facing establishment-backed team such as Dinamo or CSKA, symbols of repressive government. Spartak also known back then for its tendencies to deviate from Soviet football conventions, both in recruiting players and tactics, no doubt being influenced by its long-standing president, Nikolai Starostin.

Overall, I am highly interested by this book. The history of Spartak Football Team was closely intertwined with the history of Soviet Union, I am also piqued by the theory which stated if Football came to Russia earlier, the whole communist revolution could be averted.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

It looks at the football club and he tries to show a link between the changing status of life within the USSR and how the club's actions were. Overall Edelman does well at it, and tries to show a link of how Soviet society went, and sport history is seriously understudied by academics. While the connection may be a little tenuous, Edelman does present some good evidence, and the history of both Spartak and Soviet society as seen through support of the team is quite interesting. It follows his more famous book, Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR, which despite being published in the early 1990s is still the standard work on Soviet sport history (Spartak was published in 2012 and he readily acknowledges the lack of archival access for the first book hindering its interpretation).

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There are a great many things we understand only with our bodies." -Pierre Bourdieu

"The game is where we tell ourselves stories about ourselves." -Anthony King

I've always felt football was a fascinating way to study history and especially conflict, and the story of Spartak Moscow is a fascinating piece of the Russian and Soviet myth. There are real insights, and this book also explores what it was like to run a business in the Soviet Union, a fascinating layer of society in between the grey stories of faceless peasants and factory workers on the one hand or the well-connected and well-fed upper crust on the other.

I can't say I loved it because this book does get a bit bogged down when Edelman recounts famous games and seasons in a string of results and numbers without a lot of context. Of the many, many players and coaches and other influential figures in Spartak's history, only Nikolai and Andrei Starostin truly become fleshed out as vivid figures in that drama, but it is still a great tale and a good book, which should be enjoyed up by anyone with a fascination for sport or Russia.

[Cynthia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry to say it, but I saw little to no evidence of what he's trying to argue. I do know a lot more about football in the U.S.S.R. now, however.